Confederation -- 37

Chapter 37

Judith didn't take the news very well. She was shocked at first and then angry that Jake had gone off and gotten killed, leaving her to face the rapidly gathering enemy. I don't remember her exact words when I contacted her on the comm, but they were something along the lines of: "That blasted fool! He was always too daring. He shouldn't have been up in that stupid ship anyway. Why did you have to give it to him? We need him here right now!" But with a lot more profanity.

The Motherland Army had finally brought up most of their big guns and were engaged in periodic shelling of the metro area with mixed effect. I estimated that at least half of their hits destroyed buildings that were overdue to be knocked down, so it could be argued that they were doing Denver a favor. Even so, Judith's nerves were shot. Even though no shells had landed near the stadium headquarters, she was a nervous wreck.

The sky over Denver was mostly overcast, so that we couldn't use the monitor's telescopic capability with any great degree of success. Even the infrared overlay didn't help much, although I could make out blurs that were either groups of men or animals.

The lousy weather was unusual for the area. The front range is ordinarily sunny and clear, but this was one of the few times it wasn't. As a result, I felt the need to get down there to see the strategic situation for myself.

I held a video conference with my captains and decided to fly down in the smaller shuttle. It was armed and able to do high-altitude surveillance, so it was the natural choice for a brief recon. Frazzle and I headed down to the shuttle bay, leaving Liz in the command seat and Hattie sitting at weapons control.

Liz wasn't yet trained well enough to fly the ship in FTL mode (nor was I). She'd been working with Frazzle, learning how the thing worked. One of the problems she'd encountered was that many of the controls were Sunny-specific and challenging for human fingers and reflexes. She could run the monitors and use the Em-drive, as long as the navigation problems weren't tricky. She'd probably have trouble flying it to another planet, but she could maneuver it around Earth-space. If she had difficulty, one of the more knowledgeable Sunnys would be able to provide some assistance.

Kasm was waiting when we reached the shuttle bay. I looked at him questioningly.

He spoke aloud in his low, growling tone, "I'm going to come with you. I'm bored and, besides, you might need some help."

I knew from prior experience how stubborn he could be. Once he made up his mind to do something, it was nearly impossible to convince him otherwise. I decided to make the best of things and waved him ahead of me as Frazzle opened the port and climbed into the pilot's seat.

The shuttle was small and not really suited for a Sim-tiger. The seats were set up for, I guessed, Pugs. I sat in the co-pilot's seat, and Kasm tried to get comfortable behind the two of us. There was a clash of metal as the grapples let go, and then we were drifting away from the body of our ship.

Frazzle whipped us upside down with respect to the ship's orientation and accelerated hard towards the rear. We lost orbital velocity quickly and began heading downwards into the atmosphere.

Despite how many times I'd reentered Earth's atmosphere, I still enjoyed watching the black emptiness of space begin to turn to the blue of home. We were halfway around the world and beginning to fly like an atmospheric craft. The descent into the Denver area was still to come. We passed over the western coast of California and the Sierra Nevada range. I could see the gorge of the Grand Canyon, and then we flew over the Rockies.

We'd thought to land and conference with Judith, but as we came over the Front Range, I got the idea to do a little reconnaissance.

I looked at him and suggested, "Frazzle, let's fly out over the plains and see if we can get an overview of the invaders' position."

He dutifully swung wide, passing over Colorado Springs and moving eastward in a gradual turn towards the north. As we flew, I could see groups and clots of men on the ground. They mainly were hanging around their camps in the bad weather. They'd been there long enough to set up tents and fires along with picket lines for their horses. It looked like they were well organized.

A little to the west of the camps, there were artillery batteries. A group of the guns fired as we passed overhead, and I could see the flash and smoke. One of the weapons blew a perfect smoke ring that lasted for a moment before it dispersed.

We'd flown up to a point about due east of Thornton when someone on the ground launched a rocket at us. Frazzle was better prepared than he had been the last time. He jinked the ship violently, and the missile went by on the right side. It started to arc around to re-target us, but he accelerated, and we shot ahead, our leading edge turning bright red from the friction with the air. The shuttle was capable of outrunning the relatively slow rocket, and we did. I could see the thing nose down towards the ground far behind us as it ran out of fuel.

It sailed along an arc that terminated near one of the batteries of guns, exploding when it impacted the ground. I hoped it'd done some damage when it went off.

Shortly after that, Frazzle pointed out some dust off to the east. We circled and investigated, finding a convoy of steam tractors pulling baggage wagons loaded with supplies and ammunition. I could see pallets of artillery shells on some of the wagon beds.

This was too good an opportunity to waste. I activated the plasma cannon, and we flew back to make a strafing run. Fifteen minutes later, there was nothing left of the supply convoy. The plasma bolts had caused the steam boilers to explode with almost as much force as the artillery shells. The drivers mainly had run away when they saw us coming, but a few foolhardy men had stayed to take shots at us with their rifles.

Some of the bullets had bounced off our shuttle, but it was hardened to withstand meteor strikes that carried far more kinetic energy than a rifle could muster. The ones who had hung around long enough to shoot at us perished in the explosions as our plasma bolts traversed down the long line of wagons.

We resumed our course and circled north, coming up to the mountains over what remained of Boulder. The barren strip we'd burned across the town was a convenient point to turn back south towards Denver.

We flew over the metro area and landed in the football stadium. I could see Judith, along with a group of men, standing in the end zone waiting for us to climb out. Frazzle cut the engines and opened the hatch.

I started to move, but had to duck as Kasm, unable to contain himself any longer and desperate to stretch his legs, literally jumped over me, bounced off the flight surface, and leaped down to the ground. Frazzle, and I followed more sedately. Judith waved as we approached, as did the men standing beside her.

I wasted no time in amenities, "Hello, all of you. We've been out over the plains looking at the army investing the town. There are maybe forty or fifty thousand men, most of them mounted along with, I think, ten artillery batteries."

Frazzle interrupted, "No, deys twelve batteries. You missed two cause you looked out the wrong side. I counted twelve."

The others grinned at his statement, and I shrugged, "Well, I stand corrected. The Sunnys like to be as exact as possible, so it must be twelve batteries. We saw a convoy of supplies and took the time to wipe it out, so maybe they might run a little short of ammunition for their big guns."

That was an understatement. There had been at least twenty wagons of ammunition, much of which had exploded when struck by the plasma bolts and tractor debris. With any luck, the guns would run out of ammunition, and bombardment would cease until the Motherlanders could bring up more shells.

We went inside and arranged ourselves in a conference room to discuss matters. They had rigged a steam-powered generator, and actual electric lights illuminated the place. Jake had always found it necessary to meet in rooms with windows or use torches. The electric lighting was an unexpected luxury that I was pleased to see. Maybe our species wasn't going to just fade into obscurity and disappear after all.

Judith started the meeting by introducing her staff. I'm afraid that I didn't pay much attention. I was looking at a large map that was posted on the wall. It showed the Denver area, and someone had marked the locations of the enemy camps reasonably accurately.

"Dec, uh – Dec?" she said, trying to get my attention.

I jerked. I'd been thinking about how to wipe out the camps.

"Yes?" I answered.

She said, "We think they will attack in a few days. My scouts have informed me that at least another twenty thousand men are heading this way from the Goodland area. It'll take them a while to get here, and they'll need to rest for a day after they arrive, but then they're sure to attack in full force."

I thought about it for a moment, then asked, "Has the shelling been doing any damage?"

"Not much. They've knocked down a lot of houses, but you know that most of the outlying subdivisions are vacant anyway. Most of our people have moved closer to the mountains. The shells have started some fires, and we're just letting those burn out on their own. Otherwise, they haven't hit anything we can't do without," she answered, then continued, "Of course, we don't have very much by way of things we can't do without. Our men are mostly holed up in valleys or gullies, so the artillery hasn't bothered them."

Kasm had remained silent, but now he spoke, "What kind of force do you have?"

His deep, growling voice caused everyone to turn and stare. Judith stuttered a bit. I don't think she had realized that he could speak English.

She shook off her surprise and answered,

"We've only got about twenty thousand, total. There are still some fighters filtering over the mountains. We sent out riders to try and recruit help from the groups and towns to the west, and quite a few people have taken us up on our request."

Kasm said, "You don't have enough to stand and fight. We don't have enough people in our ships to make a difference, either. My people would make a good raiding party for night work, perhaps, but I don't want to have to make a stand in the daylight where you humans can shoot at us."

He looked at me, "Dec, we're going to have to use the spaceships. We must shoot at them with the anti-matter weapons."

I stood slowly; then, I pointed at the wall map.

"Maybe there's something else we can do that will discourage them even more. Remember, we burned them out with anti-matter the last time they attacked, and they've come right back."

Judith asked, "What do you have in mind?"

I smiled a tight smile and answered, "Maybe if we drop KEWs on each of their camps, they'll get the message. We can hit each camp accurately, and if we do it at night with a sizable mass, it might kill nearly all of them."

One of the staff members, an older man with a full beard, said, "Wait a minute, now wait just a minute. What's a KEW?"

I hadn't realized that they might not know.

"Kinetic Energy Weapon – basically, it can be anything we want to drop on them. A piece of rock, for example, falling out of orbit, will be moving at thousands of miles per hour when it hits. If it is fairly large, the impact will be the equivalent of hundreds of tons of explosive."

He thought about it for a moment, then asked, "Where will you get rocks? Do we have to haul them for you? Will you need any particular kind?"

I grinned at his naivety.

"No, one thing our solar system has is plenty of rocks. They're floating around in space, mostly out past Mars. We'll go and pick up some asteroids, drag them to Earth, and break off a few chunks. Those will do very well. The enemy somehow believes they can avoid an anti-matter strafing run. Their camps are situated well back from where we made our first pass. Maybe they don't know what hit them that time and think they're safe where they are. If so, vaporizing their camps might be more effective, although I hate to kill that many humans. There aren't enough of us as it is. It's stupid, but they aren't going to quit unless forced to. Anyway, the KEWs should cause a great amount of destruction, and those who aren't killed will be unsure of exactly what happened, except they'll know that their camps suddenly were vaporized. They're most likely going to think we hit them with atomic bombs. I think that will do it. It should be very demoralizing."

Judith shook her head, "I can't believe that we're sitting here talking about killing thousands of people. I was a defense lawyer before... before the EMP blast. I tried to help people. I don't like this very much."

The bearded guy responded, "You'll like it even less if those Motherland people defeat us."

She was quiet for a moment and then nodded, "Yes. I guess you're right. We need for them to leave us alone if they won't be peaceful."

I thought of their President and said, "I don't think they're going to be friendly, no matter what we do, Judith. They seem to be dead set on conquering and killing everyone who wants to live independently of them. We've got to hand them a huge defeat. One so intimidating that they'll forever leave us alone afterward. Wiping out their army is about the only way to do that."